Lawyers challenge Miranda rights training

Posted: Wednesday, November 10, 1999

LINDA DEUTSCHAP Special Correspondent

LOS ANGELES - Some California police departments are circumventing the "You have the right to remain silent" Miranda warning by training their officers to question suspects even after they ask for an attorney, civil rights lawyers said.

The lawyers said a training videotape shown to departments statewide represents the latest test of the Miranda ruling, which was handed down in 1966 by a liberal Supreme Court and has been under attack ever since.

"It's life imitating `NYPD Blue,' " said Mark Rosenbaum, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who is challenging the practice with a lawsuit.

The TV show often portrays detectives giving the warning and then continuing the interrogation even after the suspect "lawyers up."

The Miranda warning given by police tells suspects they have a right to remain silent and to have an attorney. They are told anything they say may be used against them in court, and if they can't afford a lawyer one will be appointed for them. But the Supreme Court never explicitly said the warnings are required by the Constitution.

The practice of questioning suspects even after they ask for an attorney was the subject of a federal appeals court decision Monday. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled police officers can be sued for engaging in the practice. It said Miranda rights fall under the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination.

The court was ruling in a lawsuit filed in 1995 against the Los Angeles and Santa Monica police departments and officers who questioned two murder suspects even after they invoked their right to an attorney.

The lawsuit, which seeks only token damages and is aimed at stopping the practice, now goes to trial in federal court.

For their part, the officers argued they are immune from lawsuits because they were acting according to their department training.

"This decision tells them that it's no defense to say, `Hey, I was trained to break the law,' " said Charles Weisselberg, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley who filed the lawsuit with the ACLU and others.

The training in question comes in part from a video titled "Questioning Outside Miranda." In it, an Orange County prosecutor tells officers they have the authority to keep questioning even after suspects ask for an attorney. If suspects try to stay silent, he says, officers should still push them to provide details of a crime or to confess.

"Whether you do it is up to you," prosecutor Devallis Rutledge says in the video. "I don't tell you what to do. Can you do it? Sure you can."